“In the multitude of anxieties within me, Your comfort delights my soul.” King David

It’s normal to struggle with a multitude of anxieties from time to time in life! Some anxiety is extremely relevant! Some grief is very necessary! Some anger is often justified! Some pain is for a reason!

If you are struggling with pain, grief, anxiety and anger – it’s normal… as long as you can name the reason for your struggle. The struggle is real, it’s normal, it’s human, it’s a valuable process. What I’m saying is that if you know the reason behind your feelings – chances are you are feeling something normal!

In our culture we might be prompted to believe that ALL our difficult emotions are bad and should be drowned out by intervention or pills.

Our difficult emotions matter. We need to listen to them, and bring them to God so that in the midst of a multitude of anxieties His comfort can delight our souls. Take time to journal and pray through your emotions. Can you identify WHY you are feeling the struggle?

Don’t drown it out.

Listen to the cry of your heart. Cry it out in song, poetry, Psalms, sobs, and prayer. His comfort can delight your soul, in the midst of it all.

So often we are ashamed of the struggle and think there is something wrong with feeling our emotions. It’s normal and healthy to experience emotions related to real life pain and struggle.

If you can’t identify the root of your struggle there might be a hormonal or mental health issue. If you are sad and angry and grieving for no reason at all, you may need some serious help.

But if you are struggling for a reason, don’t be so hard on yourself for feeling your very human emotions.

We need our emotions.

They can actually bring healing.

When we face our emotions, and acknowledge the pain, loss or injustice that created our feelings we can start to work on the root cause, or just say to ourselves and our dear ones: “It’s okay to cry, sleep in, listen to the same song over and over, and even curl up in a ball on the bathroom floor!

And it’s okay to ask for help so you can give yourself some respite! Don’t just put on your big girl pants and pretend like you are fine when you are not. It’s okay to let go of some tasks in life that are overwhelming you right now. It’s okay to say NO to pressure to be something you are not, while you heal.

So often moms with little ones feel depressed, and overwhelmed, and lonely, and tired. And they wonder what’s wrong.

What you are going through is normal!

It’s really hard to not get enough sleep! It’s hard to heal from a c-section! It’s hard to care for a baby and preschooler!

It’s hard to work outside the home and try to keep the home running too! It’s really hard to lose a loved one to death, a move, or a break-up!!! You have a reason to cry. Life is hard and pills or alcohol or escapism will not fix it.

It’s okay to feel the struggle!

I think a lot of us struggle more than we were created to, because we have no village, no support system, no compassionate partner in life to share the burden with, no connection with a close mother, sister or auntie.

Women, we were created to live in community. But our modern lifestyle puts jobs and education before family and we disconnect from the roots that sustain and support us.

Maybe instead of drowning out the heartache we should stop replacing human contact with phones.

Maybe we need to work on healing broken family relationships and forgive our mothers, sisters, aunties, friends and grandmas for not being perfect.

I’ve been around long enough to see that a friend or family member can be deemed disposable if they make one mistake too many. Sometimes we are like fair-weather friends – who are there when everything is fun and easy… but gone when a friend is hurting and grieving!

We don’t seem to know how to be there for our friends and family who are struggling with emotional pain. We don’t try to get out of our comfort zones to find out how to support a friend through loss, we just let them go, make new friends, or just quit trying because relationships are a lot of work.

Or we try to customize our “village” to surround ourselves only with people who believe exactly what we believe and we sever those connections when differences arise.

We no longer live in tight communities where we have to work out our differences.

We can change churches, jobs, schools, states, and spouses if we are not “happy”.

But what if being “happy” is not found in having the perfect life, surrounded by the perfect people, doing the perfect things?

What if happiness can be found IN the Multitude of our Anxieties because God’s COMFORT DELIGHTS our SOULS!!!

Did you get that? SOULS!!!!

It’s the SOUL–they can rise above all the pain, grief, anger, sadness and exhaustion because they are not of this world. The soul can experience joy, peace, hope, delight, and comfort no matter what’s happening in the mind, heart, body and earthly story. I’m okay, through a multitude of earthly anxieties my soul is flourishing! It’s the soul that sings in sadness.

Depressed? Sad? Grieved? Angry?

Let your soul delight in eternal comfort and never ending love.

When we are born into God’s family, when we receive the love and gift of God’s rescue through Jesus, our souls come to life, and there is peace that passes understanding.

Do you want to thrive and overcome the pain? Healing starts with the soul. If you need help figuring out how to revive your soul do a search in the Psalms of the Bible for the word SOUL.

If you need a friend to pray for you, just let me know in the comments. How’s it going with your soul? How can I pray for you?